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Open a great financial advisor's door and you will find a team. While your advisor is the one you usually speak with -- and the good ones do pick up the phone -- he or she increasingly has a broad array of pros beavering away in the background. That's true whether the advisor is part of a Wall Street firm or an independent outfit, and as a customer, you should make it your business to understand the team's capabilities.

As the demands of wealthy investors have grown more complex, teams across the country have been adding positions and adjusting their strategies and structures. Many now include a chief investment officer, a retirement planner, an accountant, one or two assistant advisors, and perhaps even some traders. In some cases the teams have more than 20 members, even though there's just one name on the door.

Barron's took the measure of today's teams by checking in with five of the best -- from New York to Los Angeles and points between. You'll find short profiles of these groups on the following pages. While each team has its own approach, they're all responding to the same thing: increased demands from their main clientele. Still smarting from the financial crisis of 2008, these investors are demanding more and making sure they get it.

Consider the wealthy family that began talking with the Pennsylvania-based Waldron Wealth Management about handling money for multiple generations of the clan. In the old days, folks like that would relax on their Winchester couch with the labrador and wait for the bankers to arrive. Not anymore. The family insisted on traveling 300 miles to visit the Waldron offices, meet the 24-member team and generally have a look around. Not until they had done all that and mulled the matter for a few weeks did the family sign on.

"Clients are taking a 'trust but verify' approach these days," explains Jeff Howden, chief investment officer and an executive wealth counselor at Waldron. "You can't just stand behind a logo or tagline."

Reza Zafari of the Jones, Zafari Group, a 22-member group within Merrill Lynch, puts it this way: "We're in a new world where everything has come under question."

Wealthy investors want more reassurance and better education than ever. Awakened to the fragility of wealth, they fret over successfully transferring their assets to their children -- while also trying to put in structures to prevent the kids from blowing it. In response, advisor teams are rolling out services that the one-man shops of yore could never have dreamed of. Polk Wealth Management, a New York-based group within Morgan Stanley Private Wealth Management, even has a "wealth psychologist" to help families work out problems about governance and succession.

ADVISOR TEAMS HAVE BEEN AROUND for some time, but they have increased in size and sophistication as the growing ranks of millionaires and billionaires have demanded more varied services. Beyond stocks and bonds, their clients want more complex, alternative investments, financial planning and sometimes banking and insurance. Advisory fees typically range from 0.25% to 0.75% of assets, and usually cover the extra services.

Financial advisors often start thinking of forming teams when their assets under management pass the $100 million mark. That's when their work load starts to require some real assistance, and when their revenue is sufficient to pay for it. Some teams handle a lot more that: Among the five we visited, assets under management ranged from $1 billion to $12 billion.

Teams can take a variety of forms, says Mindy Diamond, the owner of financial-advisor recruiting firm Diamond Consultants, in New York. As in any well-run business, good advisors buddy up with others who complement their skill sets. A trust-and-estates specialist, for example might look to join forces with a rainmaker; an analytical personality might seek a warmer public face for the firm. Parent brokerage firms often play matchmaker, Diamond adds.

From clients' perspective, the best teams are often those that combine multiple areas of expertise under one roof. It's important, though, that team members share common views on things like how to invest and how to run the business. Different philosophies can pull teams apart, Diamond says. Strong leadership is therefore essential, whether it comes from a lead advisor with a majority stake in the team or a small collection of partners. Both structures can work well.

You can start to get a sense of some teams' style and culture the minute you walk into their offices. At Waldron Wealth Management, just outside Pittsburgh, the gab flows as freely as the turkeys, deer and other wildlife from nearby woodlands the roam the grounds. If any harsh news from markets happens to intrude, there's no need to worry about nervous coffee spills: The bathrooms are equipped with stain remover.

NCA Financial Planners

It's no accident that 80% of the advisors at NCA Financial are women: That's the way Kevin Myeroff, CEO and president of the firm, wants it.

"Women have much more empathy," he explains. "When one of [the firm's female advisors] asks a client how his or her son is doing, it's because they really care. I'm not sure guys are that interested."

Having strong relationships with clients is a top priority for the firm. When a prospect or new client comes along, the team members don't compete for the business as they do in some firms. Instead, they direct the person to the advisor who seems to best match the client's personality.

Indeed, NCA's compensation structure encourages this. All its advisors are salaried, and their bonuses are team-based. That results in a noncompetitive climate where the goal is to help clients succeed, period, says Myeroff. "You can't have financial thoughts in your head if you're trying to help the client," he says.

IF ONLY THE ILLS OF THE MARKETS could be erased so easily. Not so long ago, investors with $10 million or more never had to worry much about maintaining their lifestyles. But that is fast changing: "For the first time in our careers, you're having people who are very, very wealthy worry that they're not going to make it to the other side," says Richard Jones of the Jones, Zafari Group, part of Merrill Lynch Private Banking and Investment Group.

The problem is today's lousy returns. Before 2008, an investor with a balanced portfolio of stocks and bonds could expect 8% to 10% annual returns. Today defensively positioned portfolios could be generating as little as 2% or 3% a year. That shrunken return could force periodic dips into the principal, which might mean the money runs out several years earlier than the client had anticipated.

Kevin Myeroff, the CEO of Cleveland-based NCA Financial Planners, says clients' attention has shifted from getting ahead and living larger to not falling behind. For some, plans to snap up an airplane, a luxury car, or a vacation home have been replaced by hopes to maintain the current lifestyle.

In an effort to generate some returns higher than the market's, NCA has been recommending more aggressive, higher-turnover mutual funds and separate accounts. "Our clients definitely want us to be more active," he says. "It's sort of like being in a fight and you're getting punched: At some point, you've got to punch back."

A flood of new business has forced the Jones, Zafari Group, part of Bank of America's Merrill Lynch Private Banking and Investment, to increase its team by 50% over the past five years—but partner Richard Jones is typically understated. "We've had to grow due to more business coming in," he says simply.

In fact, business has been racing ahead since the 2008 market crash, not just because clients are referring prospects, but also because they're giving the firm more of their money to manage.

The typical client now has the Jones, Zafari team manage 93% of his or her investment assets, says Jones. That's up from about 75% prior to the crash and the continuing market volatility. The group's model—which combines a suite of private-banking services with lots of personal attention and a conservative investing approach—has been the key, says partner Reza Zafari.

"The model has worked because of all the uncertainty," he says. But the increased staff was needed: clients have become more demanding, and the group has had to better understand hedge funds and commodities trading.

The Jones, Zafari Group has generally scaled back clients' exposure to stocks. To boost income and provide more diversification, it has increased holdings of alternative assets such as real estate and precious metals.

"The way I look at it, we went from a four-cylinder car to an eight-cylinder car," says co-leader Zafari. "We've added much broader portfolios that increase diversity and provide you with more stability."

Investors and their advisors also have become more willing to move in and out of investments quickly, if that's what it takes to stay ahead. Says Tallie Taylor of the Polk Group: "Clients are much more focused on preservation of capital, which actually allows us to sit in cash for longer periods of time and thus to capture the big volatility movements in the market and the disproportionately positive opportunities that arise."

Still, there's only so far you can go in boosting returns without taking on undue risk. And as a result of the financial crisis, many advisors say, investors' tolerance for risk has diminished notably. That has raised the importance of family expense control in preserving wealth. Budgeting, once a taboo topic, has moved to front and center. The teams' accountants and planners are helping families understand their expenses, looking for what can be cut with the least sacrifice.

Before the crisis, advisors often wouldn't learn about a client's big purchase -- a boat, a second home, you name it -- until well after the fact. Now, advisors say, clients rarely make such a big purchase without first checking in.

Polk Wealth Mgmt.

The Polk group's motto --"All Things to Some People" -- tells you all you need to know about the team's philosophy.

"We try to do everything we possibly can that the client asks for," says F. Lyon Polk, the group's founder.

Polk's team provides investment management, estate and legacy planning, family advisory services, personal banking, and balance-sheet management. And it does indeed serve a limited number of people: Its roster of 200 is decidedly small for a 20-member team.

The low advisor-to-client ratio allows the Polk team to provide as much personal service as its demanding clients—many of them hedge-fund managers and others with financial backgrounds -- require.

The approach has borne fruit, as the group has seen the assets it manages triple over the past five years. In 2012 alone, says Polk, it's garnered four new clients with more than $100 million each of assets.

IF THERE'S ONE THING that great teams have in common, it's knowing how to marshal the collective wits of the group. For NCA, continual debate among team members creates a natural system of checks and balances, CEO and President Kevin Myeroff says. The system worked earlier this year, for instance, when markets were turning down and "we were thinking, 'Should we scale this back and preserve what we have?' "

The discussions -- some held at the team's lunch table in the middle of an open room -- led NCA to steer away from what would have been, in effect, market timing, a practice the firm prefers to avoid. And since 2008, the group has made a concerted effort to avoid "recency bias," or the tendency to be overly influenced by recent investments.

"There are still, in 2012, walls of worry about this world because of the proximity to 2008," Myeroff says. "Are clients really making the right decisions, and are we making the right decisions for clients?"

Members of the best teams also know how to anticipate clients' worries and act accordingly. With the world awash in bad news -- the crisis in Europe, the bankruptcies of some California towns, interest-rate-rigging in the global banking sector, and the approaching "fiscal cliff" -- there's plenty of anxiety among clients.

Teams have responded with more communications about the markets. Some have instituted conference calls where all clients can dial in, and almost everyone has increased the frequency of 1-on-1 discussions.

Forte Group

Ami Forte and her team thrive helping clients tackle big, complex issues, but they attribute much of their success to a simple skill. "We're very good listeners," says Forte, the founding managing director. "Clients feel comfortable talking to us."

That skill has translated into 350 clients, $1.9 billion of assets, and a growing team. Since Forte and financial advisor Chuck Lawrence founded the team in 2001, it has grown to five advisors and two assistants.

As the team has grown, clients have benefited from its broadened perspective: The Forte team now includes men and women and spans a wide spectrum of ages and family situations. The diversity applies to the team members' skills as well: The firm can boast of expertise in investing, financial planning, estate planning, accounting, and more under one roof. A relatively small client base means that those skills are used to craft customized solutions for each client, says Lawrence. "We don't use a cookie-cutter approach," he says. "We don't have to."

The Forte Group has made a point of tuning in to media outlets that its clients follow. Team members pay close attention to the high-octane cable TV shows and the clipped market explanations on the radio. "I might hear something that I know is not accurate and that is going to freak out Mrs. Smith -- so I'll make a call," says Ami Forte.

But the biggest fear of clients, hands down, is much closer to home. More than ever, advisors say, clients are concerned about the long-term wellbeing of their families. "A lot of them have come back to the fundamentals of what's important," says Polk advisor Edmund Agresta III, "They realize the money could be gone in a heartbeat."

That's why more and more teams are pushing into fields like estate planning. "Clients are far more conscious of their kids not quickly spending through their inheritance," says Ami Forte.

Teams are offering advice on the size and frequency of disbursements from trusts. And they're helping put in place corporate trustees to keep an eye on grown children once the parents are gone.

Ultimately, these concerns go far beyond money. "What's become the most important thing for our clients in the past couple of years is how to not mess up their kids," says F. Lyon Polk, founder of Polk Wealth Management. His team and others are helping client families create a clear playbook for how the next generation should conduct itself and contribute to the world.

Family fortunes often unravel at the second generation "because succeeding generations from the matriarch or patriarch don't understand their roles and responsibilities," says Waldron advisor Chris Roe.

Waldron Wealth Mgmt.

Want to see pinstriped suits? Go to Armani. The Waldron Wealth Management group dresses casually -- and clients seem to like what that stands for. Clients often say, "We like you guys because you're not New York -- you've got more of a Midwest feeling," says Chief Investment Officer Jeff Howden.

The team's down-to-earth feel engenders trust in a post-Madoff world, its members say. And it's got plenty of substance to match its image. Waldron comprises two divisions: a multi-family office unit, focused on business owners and wealth inheritors, and a private-wealth-management unit that serves corporate executives and high earners.

To power those divisions, founder and CEO John Waldron has built a team with expertise in everything from investing to accounting to business consulting.

"We don't just go out and hire stock brokers," says Waldron. "With each hire, I look for the best talent but also a bit of a different perspective."

For the Waldron team, family governance is typically addressed on neutral ground like a resort. The agenda mixes pleasure -- golfing, sailing, or fishing -- with the business of talking through questions of how to steward multigenerational wealth.

In some cases, the teams are helping clients compare notes on questions of wealth and family governance. Polk recently organized a dinner for three families with more than $100 million of assets each for that purpose, and to make sure they got talking, he also invited the wealth psychologist.

It all adds up to an entirely different business than the one practiced by the teams' professional ancestor, the "customer's man" of the mid-20th century. That guy sold stocks and bonds and, when the going got rough, took the phone off the hook. Today's rich investors would never stand for it.

"They're certainly not giving us a pass or saying, 'Do whatever you want; you saved us,' " says Myeroff. "They're more concerned with, 'what have we done for them lately?'" The good teams have plenty to say in reply.